Published: 2020 | Alexander Sahn Abstract High housing prices drive inequality, reduce growth, and increase racial segregation. Scholars have identified laws restricting the use of land, particularly for dense multi-family housing, as a primary cause of housing unaffordability. What explains…
Warding Off Development: Local Control, Housing Supply, and NIMBYs
Published: 2020 | Evan Mast | The Center for Growth and Opportunity Abstract Local control of land-use regulation creates a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) problem that can suppress housing construction, contributing to rising prices and potentially slowing economic growth. I study how…
To Understand a City’s Pace of Gentrification, Look at Its Housing Supply
Published: 2020 | Laurie Goodman, Ellen Seidman, Jun Zhu | Urban Institute Abstract Gentrification is a hotly debated subject, with conversations centering around what happens to neighborhoods’ income and racial mix as new buyers move in and how that affects…
The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes
Published: 2020 | Andrew Aurand, Dan Emmanuel, Diane Yentel | National Low Income Housing Coalition Abstract A large-scale, sustained commitment to affordable housing for people with the lowest incomes, through such programs as the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF), Housing…
The Geography of Inequality: How Land Use Regulation Produces Segregation
Published: 2020 | Jessica Trounstine | American Political Science Review Abstract Public goods in the United States are largely funded and delivered at the local level. Local public goods are valuable, but their production requires overcoming several collective action problems…
It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning
Published: 2020 | Paavo Monkkonen, Michael Lens, and Michael Manville | Journal of the American Planning Association Abstract Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of…
Housing & Social Equity Series: Discussion with Richard Rothstein, Author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Housing and Social Equity Series Episode 1 | Webinar This event is the first in our Housing & Social Equity Series — join us to explore and understand the adverse impacts of the housing crisis across California, particularly in communities…
Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era
Published: 2019 | Robert Bartlett, Adair Morse, Richard Stanton, Nancy Wallace Abstract Under U.S. fair-lending law, lenders can discriminate against minorities only for creditworthiness. Using an identification under this rule, afforded by the GSEs’ pricing of mortgage credit risk, we…
Building Black Homeownership Bridges: A Five-Point Framework for Reducing the Racial Homeownership Gap
Published: 2019 | Alanna McCargo, Jung Hyun Choi, and Edward Golding | Urban Institute Abstract Homeownership is an important wealth-building source and a foundation for economic stability. Owning a home can provide a stable place to live and remove significant…
Urban Growth and its Aggregate Implications
Published: 2019 | Gilles Duranton, Diego Puga | Public Economics Abstract We develop an urban growth model where human capital spillovers foster entrepreneurship and learning in heterogenous cities. Incumbent residents limit city expansion through planning regulations so that commuting and…